Apple’s Tim Cook stirs up wild speculation with Valve visit

Was he there for acquisition talks? Partnership discussions? Trying to convince Gabe Newell to bet bigger on the iPad and other Apple platforms? Or was it just a friendly way for two technology companies to get to know each other?

Whatever the reason, Apple CEO Tim Cook was reportedly spotted today at the Bellevue headquarters of Valve, the game company whose Steam platform is often called the iTunes of video games.

We have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go “wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming.” And then we’ll say, “OK, here are three things you could do to make that better”, and then they say OK, and then we never see them again. And then a year later, a new group of people show up, who apparently have no idea that the last group of people were there, and never follow though on anything. So, they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there’s never any follow through on any of the things they say they’re going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms.

Of course, a visit by the Apple CEO is a different matter entirely. Rumors aside, the real litmus test will be whether to Newell shows up on stage to make an announcement at a future Apple event.

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Comments

Build Steam into Apple TV and ship it with a controller like Onlive’s. Valve is hiring for a hardware designer. I would love Steam on my TV.

Joe the coder

Gabe at apple?

Joe the coder

Use html like syntax? insert the visual of gears grinding. lol.

Guest

Everone has a price and Apple has more cash than any other technology company. It would be a very smart move on Apple’s part. They’d up beating MS in gaming as well as everything else. They’re already hlaf way there without Valve.

Guest

I think that Apple would be an excellent OEM for Valve’s upcoming “SteamBox.” For those of you not in the know, Valve is planning to introduce a set-top box designed to play games with its popular Steam platform. Apple TV 3.0 would be an excellent platform for Steam.

We’d like to see this happen. Tim and Gabe, please do it. Apple has never even considered creating a game console for the home in its 35-year history, but Apple TV Steambox would be a desirable product for all of us.

llibsetag

Apple Pippin attempted this in the past… but, today, Valve + SteamBox + AppleTV would be excellent! PLUS, comments about gaming / meetings were under Steve Jobs & even though he used to work for Atari was not a huge computer gaming fan on the Mac platform. THAT was the past, Tim Cook is the FUTURE & Apple is a totally different company than it was under “Pippin”… THIS will be HUGE!